I’ve always been a big supporter of working with vendors. I love talking to my vendors, because I feel they know a lot about the industry and what other libraries are doing, and they get to talk to many librarians in my region more than I do. I always spend hours on the exhibit floor at ALA, meeting with my vendors and trying to learn more about the products we have or might acquire. I have always believed, on the advice of Lynn Wiley (my graduate assistant supervisor), that vendors are our partners – we can’t do what we do without the products and services they develop, and they can’t survive unless we are around to provide them with business and patrons.
But lately I’ve been feeling a little let down and, even, betrayed by my vendors, and am wondering if those who view vendors with mistrust and even as adversaries also have a point.
For example, the vendor of a product we just agreed to buy, partially because it would lock in pricing for a very desired development they told us was coming “later this year,” just told us that the development would not be available until next summer. A journal publisher recently raised the price of a package for our consortium by 1,900% (the consortium has let us know the state is dropping the package). We signed up for an ILS software upgrade which brought our entire ILS to a screeching halt for about a week when implemented and does not include some of the functionality we were promised (and partially bought it for). Functionality announced as approved for development in our ERM over two years ago has not even begun (at least, the beta, which was supposed to happen 18 months ago, has never been scheduled).
Our discovery system’s upgrade announced for this summer was delayed, then the preview was non-functional, and is now only partially functional; it will not be ready for implementation (in my mind) by the time fall semester starts due to a few serious design flaws, and is supposed to replace the old interface completely by January, forcing us into a mid-year change (which we try to avoid). Knowledgebase software upgrades by another vendor that were originally announced for June have been delayed to August and now, possibly, January, changing our review and potential adoption plans drastically, because we have decided that the way the product currently works is unacceptable and impossible for us to implement.
One vendor whose product we were trialing last fall pushed me too far and caused me to halt the trial. Another vendor, whose cold calls I had ignored (because we already had a similar product with lots of content overlap whose use was woefully low and which, indeed, we’ve cancelled), approached our university’s provost to sell the product instead. (I was going to chat with them about this at ALA this summer but, surprise, they weren’t even there.) I’ve asked direct questions of two other vendors repeatedly this summer (in person, in webinars, in email), been promised answers, have never received them (or only received partial answers), and have finally, months later, come to the conclusion I’ll never get them.
Perhaps I have been naïve and overly trusting of what my vendors tell me about development releases, when I should know to take them with a grain of salt. Perhaps I have put too much stock in what people in sales have said when I should know that developers and salespeople do not necessarily communicate closely or share information well. Perhaps some of these things are honest oversights rather than deliberate obfuscations – our vendors’ staff are overworked, just like I am, and their companies’ budgets are tight, just like my library’s. But I don’t feel like all of my vendors are partnering with me in good faith – instead, I feel like some of them are just trying to sell me things.
What about you? Have any of you experienced similar situations recently with vendors? How did you handle them? Have you adopted any tactics to successfully ward off any of the experiences I’ve mentioned from occurring (or reoccurring)?
When we met with our ILS vendor about its upgrade (which we ended up purchasing more or less sight unseen, since no preview was available), the salesperson said, “It’s a trust relationship.” Really? Trust is earned. Some of my vendors are going to have to start working harder for mine.
There are a number of vendor contacts that I like personally, but I have lost most faith I have in the publishing and library vendor industries in general. They are all too eager to sell me something new, but rarely interested in making the half-assed existing products any better. My consortia dropped a database this year because despite it having unique and valuable content, the interface was terrible. When I expressed my concern to the sales person, they responded that the company had no plans to improve the interface or even simply port the content into their main (and better) platform. As a result, we are not likely to renew ourselves when the subscription year runs out. Other sales people have thrown up tremendous resistance when we have opted to not renew or to change packages, despite having a large portfolio of products sold to us over the years. They seem to retain no good will or trust in us as partners, so I see no reason why I should do the same anymore. Publishers and library vendors are more like frenemies than partners these days.